“My stepmother was no beauty. She was round and squat with a face not unlike a potato that had been scrubbed.”

“All she had to protect herself against him was silence, the one skill in which she had become an expert.”

“Furniture, my good husband," she said, her mouth full of food, "that be too pretty is without pure thought. Tables with turned and carved legs only encourage the devil to dine."My father stared at her, bewildered.This house needs to be made ready for the second coming of the Lord Jesus Christ, for when he returns to our fair city and takes his rightful place as king, he'll be needing a good meal in a godly home. Do not you agree, husband?"My father was speechless. Maud, in no way put off by his silence, said, "He will be very hungry. It has been a long time since the Last Supper.”

“The floor had become a sea and the bed a ship, seen from a great distance. I could hear their voices calling me from far away. It lasted a minute or less. Maybe I dreamed it. Maybe I did not. It was an image that came to haunt me, and I have often wondered what would have happened if I had done as I was told and left the silver shoes alone. Would everything then have been alright?”

“I got through so much ink in the learning that the inkseller took to knocking at least once a week on the garden door. He had a gray solemn face that looked as if it was chiseled out of stone; he was stooped down like the letter C, as if he were Atlas carrying the weight of the world in his wooden barrel of ink. Maybe he did. I have learned that there is great power in words, no matter how long or short they be.”

“He stroked Sido's cheek and bent down to kiss her, whispering what his heart had always known, what he had never said before to anyone. 'I love you, I always will.”

“What more can anyone take from me?" said my father, his head bent down. "Everywhere I go I carry my hell with me.”